It was me and Junie in front of the TV for supper, watching The Muppet Show and eating the latest crop of TV dinners, fried chicken for us both.
“I wanted to play tambourine again tonight,” Junie said. She was pushing her chicken around, wearing her DADDY’S FISHING BUDDY T-shirt. I knew it needed to be washed. “What if Maureen is there right now, waiting for us?”
“If she is,” I said, “Mr. Taft will tell her where we are and why, and we’ll all be happy because she’s safe.”
Junie nibbled the edge of her drumstick, made a face, and dropped it. “Ed said he’d buy me a corn dog after the show tonight if I came back.”
My fork froze halfway to my mouth, pearls of sweet corn dropping to the tray. “Ed who set up the show?”
“Yeah. The one who looks like Fonzie.”
“You shouldn’t be talking to him. He’s old.”
“He’s nice,” she said. “He said I was pretty.”
I gripped her elbow so hard that she squealed. “Junie, don’t you talk to him. Do you hear me?”
She jerked her arm away. “You’re jealous.”
“I am not. A grown man shouldn’t be talking to a twelve-year-old girl. When did this happen?”
“Last night.”
I ran through our movements. “Were you alone with him?”
She smiled her secret fox smile but didn’t answer. I grabbed her again and shook her. “Junie, were you alone with him?”
“No!” She started crying. “Brenda was walking me to Dad, and on the way, the man who runs the ring toss wanted to talk to her. Brenda and him went into the back of his booth. That’s when Ed showed up. He promised me cotton candy. I told him I didn’t like cotton candy, that I liked corn dogs, and he thought that was funny.”
I released her, trying to settle my pulse. “I’m sorry, Junie. I’m worried about Maureen is all. And I think Ed’s bad news.”
“You hang out with him.”
I thought of what Brenda had said about being done with Ricky. “Not anymore. Promise me you won’t, either.”
“Like you and Brenda promised me you’d practice smiling this weekend?”
I rolled my eyes, exasperated. “Junie.”
“Fine,” she said. “I promise.”
I nodded, satisfied. We chewed and watched TV for a while. Gonzo came on, Junie’s favorite. She giggled.
“Dad and I hung out at the fair after you guys left, you know,” she said. “He bought me funnel cake.”
“Nice.” I’d finished my chicken, whipped potatoes, and corn, which meant I could dig into the brownie, still warm from the oven.
“I saw Maureen when I was eating the cake,” she said. I could hear her looking at me. “I thought she’d go to that party with you, but she didn’t. She stayed at the fair.”
The brownie tasted like dust in my mouth. “What’d you see her doing?”
“She went to the ring toss booth, too. She disappeared in the back, just like Brenda did.”
I tried swallowing the chalky brownie, but I didn’t have enough spit. “Junie, what did the ring toss guy look like?”
“Like Abe Lincoln, but not as old.”
Brenda was “lovingly grounded” （feels like grounded grounded, she’d grumbled over the party line） until Maureen turned up. Claude didn’t answer his phone. That meant once I’d made sure Junie was set for the evening, I needed to go to the fair alone. I didn’t have a clear plan. I just knew that that carnival worker—who shouldn’t have been in our neighborhood—might have been the last person to see Maureen.
I wished for a moment that I was brave enough to hitchhike. It would be quicker and maybe even safer given how tight the fair traffic was, but there was a good chance that me thumbing it would get back to Dad. Brenda and Maureen had hitchhiked to the Cities last June to visit the observation deck of the IDS Center, the tallest building in all of Minnesota. I’d been too scared to sneak away with them.
I’d avoided asking them about their experience that day as well bringing up the topic of hitchhiking in general because I didn’t want to let on to Brenda that I suspected she and Maureen did that a bunch without me, too, that it was part of their new secret language, the one that included makeup and clothes and parties and hot-pink splashes of that thing I’d felt when Ant had looked at me with naked hunger.
I hopped on my Schwinn because if I hadn’t been brave enough to even ask them about hitchhiking, I definitely was too afraid to do it. It was a long, sticky bike ride, the fair on the other side of the Mississippi River from Pantown. The Ferris wheel rising over the flats of eastside Saint Cloud was the first thing I spotted. Shortly after came the swarming hum of a crowd, tinny rock-and-roll music, and the calls of midway barkers. Last was the heavy smell of fried food. Normally, it’d feel electric to be around so many people. We loved our summer gatherings in Minnesota. We spent all winter cooped up, then the snow melted, the leaves budded, and out popped the sun. Abruptly, desperately, we needed to be among people. It’s why we had a fair or a festival every other weekend, it seemed.